1. Dependent clauses are parts of a sentence that cannot not stand alone.

A dependent clause often begins with a word such as ‘after‘, ‘before‘, ‘when‘ and ‘while‘. For example, ‘Candy ran away when she saw the policeman‘. In this sentence, the dependent clause is ‘when she saw the policeman‘.

2. Look at this extract from The Cook (Chapter 12) and find the dependent clause

‘That’s right,’ replied the policeman. ‘Before she went mad, she was a scientist. She worked for the government. She said her formula changed nasty people into good people.’

3. Look again at The Cook (Chapter 12) and decide which word is best to complete the dependent clause.

a. [While/Before] Sergeant Roberts was running to the gym hall, he spoke in his radio.

b. [After/Before] Sergeant Roberts ran into the gym hall, he pulled Mr Tomkin out of it.

c. Sergeant Roberts called for ambulances [before/after] he heard that Candy was the school cook.

d. The headmistress ran into the playground [after/before] Sergeant Roberts called for ambulances.

e. [While/When] Mr Tomkin said he didn’t trust Candy, the headmistress told him to be quiet.

f. [Before/After]Mr Tomkin heard that Candy was a scientist, his eyes grew wide.

1. Adjectives describe or give us more information about nouns. For example, ‘Candy wore a long scarf.’ In this sentence, the word ‘long’ describes the scarf that Candy wore. The adjective comes before the noun (called an ‘attributive’ adjective)

In this sentence, the adjective comes after the noun (called a ‘predicative’ adjective): ‘Candy was afraid.’

2. Look at this extract from The Cook (Chapter 11) and find the adjectives in it:

But not Sergeant Roberts. Now he stood on the steps of the main building and stared hard at her. She stood completely still. ‘Oh, no,’ she thought, ‘he is trying to remember. Please don’t remember.’ Then the sergeants faced changed. His eyes became wide and his mouth dropped open: the poster on the wall in the police station. The woman from Scullwell! He took a step forward, but it was already too late.

3. Find the adjectives in these sentences and decide if they are attributive (before the noun) or predicative (after the noun)

In this example, a verb is needed so the correct word form is ‘chose’ (the past tense of ‘choose’). The word ‘choice’ is a noun and can’t be used here.

2. Knowing and choosing the correct form (or ‘Part of Speech’) of a word is important. Look at this extract from The Cook and decide if the underlined words are a noun or verb.

The surprise stopped Sergeant Roberts from moving; but only for a moment. He dropped his hat and ran after her. He was just seconds behind. He pulled the security door open and ran into the street. His mouth dropped open. He looked one way, then the other. He ran to Martin’s Fish Bar and looked up that street. Nothing. He turned around and began to run all the way around the wall, but she was not there. ‘Now what do I do?’ He thought about the poster in the police station – about the information on it. ‘I must warn them,’ he said and rushed back to the security door. It was still half-open. He looked down. On the ground, between the door and the lock, was a long purple scarf.

3. Complete these sentences by choosing the correct form of the word

a. If you [rush/in a rush] in an exam, you might make careless mistakes. I [in a rush/rushed] in my exam, so it wasn’t [surprised/a surprise] when I got my grade. It was low!

b. The [inform/information] about how to use the DVD player [a look/looked]difficult to understand.

1. Exclamations are phrases that can express strong (positive or negative) emotions. For example, imagine you have just watched a good film. You could say ‘What a movie!’. Alternatively, imagine one of the actors in the film was really bad. You could say ‘What an actor!’. Exclamations like these examples have an exclamation mark (!) at the end of them.

2. Look at this extract from The Cook (Chapter 10) and find the exclamation with ‘What’ in it.

Inside the kitchen, the headmistress, Mr Tomkin and Mrs Duffy stood at the window and looked out. ‘My goodness Ms Pickles,’ said the headmistress. ‘What a queue!’ She smiled. ‘You are a star! An absolute star!’

3. Look at these sentences and match them with the most appropriate exclamation

1. One way to use ‘much‘ and ‘many‘ is to talk about quantities of something. For example, in this sentence: ‘She has many friends‘ the number of friends is countable. ‘Many‘ is used instead of counting the exact number of friends and means ‘a large number of‘. We can also use ‘a lot of‘ instead.

In this sentence: ‘She doesn’t have much patience‘, patience cannot be counted so ‘much‘ is used. This sentence is NEGATIVE. We can also use ‘a lot of” in a NEGATIVE sentence. For example, ‘She doesn’t have a lot of patience‘. If we want to talk about something that cannot be counted in a POSITIVE way, then ‘a lot of‘ is often used. For example, ‘She has a lot of patience‘. This rule changes if ‘so‘ comes before ‘much’. For example, ‘She has so much patience‘. If we want to make a QUESTION, then ‘much‘ or ‘a lot of‘ can be used. For example, ‘Does she have much/a lot of patience?‘

2. Find the examples of ‘much’ and ‘many’ in this extract from The Cook (Chapter 9)

As usual, she worked beside the window. There were carrots to chop, swedes to smash and potatoes to peel and they all took so much time to do. Slowly, the sun rose between grey clouds. Around 8.15, the first children came through the security door and by 8.45 most of the children were in the playground.

She looked and looked for Billy, but there were so many children and none of them stayed in the same place for a second!

3. Use either ‘much’, ‘many’ or ‘a lot of’ to complete these sentences